Re: Not understanding with git wants to copy one file to another

From: Stefan Beller <sbeller@google.com>
Date: Aug 14, 2017, 18:07 UTC
Message-ID: <CAGZ79kaCuaxgGwuw7AHKTjsmwsTBuv=gWzeGDJv3TJv+b25Uvw@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <87shgx3khv.fsf@local.lan>

On Fri, Aug 11, 2017 at 1:41 PM, Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com> wrote:

Show 25 quoted lines

> Stefan Beller <sbeller@google.com> writes:
>
>
> [...]
>
>> Ah. Sorry for confusing even more.
>> By pointing out the options for git-diff, I just wanted to point out that
>> such a mechanism ("rename/copy detection") exists.
>
>
> [...]
>
>>> What am I missing?
>>>
>>
>> https://www.reddit.com/r/git/comments/3ogkk1/beginner_disable_rename_detection/
>>
>> "Rename detection is just GUI sugar".
>
> Thanks there is a nice full explanation at the cited url.
>
> What is still a bit puzzling is that in that same commit, there are
> files that are true copies of each other, just in different locations,
> But nothing pops up about them in a git commit.
>

The heuristic to find the renames/copies only looks at modified files to be fast(, the assumption is that each commit only touches few files, but the project consists of a lot of files).

For that git-diff knows about '--find-copies-harder' that looks at all files even those not modified. This would point out the true copies, I would assume.

I don't think we'd want to include the '--find-copies-harder' flag to status or commit, as it may take some time in large projects.